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I played nidzilla before, I still play it now. ( loath horde play to my core) so from a "fluff" standpoint. ( yes, the play style is all the fluff I care about) I'm happy...

I just don't like the book from a competitive standpoint. I mean, If I'm paying a grand to attend a tourney.. I'm not bringing my nids..

My biggest gripes:

1) Warriors and Primes are functionally worse for more points. This especially applies to the close combat versions and is largely a function of the next problem.

2) Spore Pods were removed. So the premier close combat army of the shooting era lost its one method of getting units closer to the enemy that does not involve slogging a bunch of bolter bait across the table.

3) Synapse Nerf is needlessly time consuming. I get that they wanted to make synapse more of a concern, but there were ways to do it without making it a random table exercise.

4) Lack of any ground based skyfire is ludicrous. Nids are literally the only newer book without any direct access to ground based skyfire (unless you count Sisters), which forces you to either bowl for 6s on Hive Guard or take the extremely limited Crone.

5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

6) Bonesword Nerf. Sort of ties into number one, but did these really need to go to AP3? Were 50pt warriors tearing through terms really an issue?

7) Venomthrope band aid. These should have been squad add ons (ala Wolf Guard or IG Commisars) that you buy five in one elite slot. Instead, they are a useless unit that can get torrented off of the table before they have any impact on the game that should cost half of what they do.

Things I like:
1) Carnifexes are somewhat playable again.

2) Hormagants are viable once more.

3) Most Gaunt options seem fairly priced.

 BoomWolf wrote:
PrinceRaven-whole other problem there, and one I have not touched, I just talked about game health issues, not how enjoyable or fluffy the army is, the two issues-while have some connections, are not one and the same. new nid codex is far better for the game's health, but not nececerly more fluffy. as for restricted, I choose to disagree, the LAST codex was far more restricted, due to "no-brainer" choices that made most of your list completely obvious to the level of "doom in spore, fill out as many tervigons as possible, spice up with remaining points", because it was honestly just too good to even try anything else.

Absolutely not. Between Mycetic Spores and the Hive Commander / Alien Cunning rules, the 5E codex was far less restrictive. It certainly didn't force you to walk short-range units like Zoanthropes across the board while your opponent avoided or shot them. They also didn't even bother to fix the Trygon tunnel rules into a usable state. Up until the 6E assault changes, Genestealers were a perfectly viable (and common) alternative to Tervigons. Outflanking or podded Devilgaunts were also a decent option. Tervigons may have been strong, but they certainly weren't a restriction on the codex.

There's a huge difference between having some undercosted units that could be taken, and just flat out losing essential deployment options across the board. The 6E codex comes with some new "no-brainer" units that are pretty obvious. I don't think for a second it opened more options, because GW spent far more time taking them away and writing them into paid DLC.

Addaran wrote:
I have to aggree here. Every single list had 2-3 troops tervigon and a spored Doom. There wasn't that much choice before.
Doom +spore was too strong. Everyone said it killed at least it's point in enemie units and probably took fire from all the army for one turn. (or the enemie had to massively spread his army)

Sad thing, they decided to scrap both. I loved the idea of the spore pods, and it wasn't anything OP with the normal units. SPecialy how only one MC could be in one. If they still wanted to scrap spore pods, they could have left Doom and maybe up a bit his cost or a minor nerf. But then people would probably complain he's totally useless.

I'm not going to cry over DoM. He was a special character unit with cheesy rules that a lot of players used as a crutch in an otherwise bland codex. Hell, I've converted and used him before, and his absence really doesn't bother me at all, it was a single model in the army.

What does bother me in the removal of spores. There was literally no reason to remove that option whatsoever. GW didn't even need to make a model for them, older Mycetic Spore rules just treated a unit using it as having Deep Strike plus a cover save the turn it arrived. It would have taken a few minutes to write that in again and it would have opened up so much flexibility in list writing. Instead we're stuck with a bunch of slow units that need to get in close to be effective. Zoanthropes took a severe hit from that change especially, as Tyranids have no viable long-ranged anti-armour. Now they have to march up the field to use an 18" weapon which is easily avoided.

Addaran wrote:
Tervigons. People act like it's total crap now, but it's still extremely good. Just not auto-include, but getting one as troop is awesome. Backfield synapse (you need it anyway for biovores, and units on objectives), will create at least one troop units, extremely tough MC troop to sit on one objective, one power, can take template.

The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Firstly, synapse is a huge issue in this codex. The lack of it can quickly make your army fall apart, and getting enough synapse into a list can be tricky. All the options for it are either in overcrowded slots (Tyrants, Zoans), expensive (Trygon / Tyranid Primes), or are pretty soft / ineffective units (Warriors, Shrikes). That makes every synapse unit precious, and if you opponent has any sense you won't have much of it left by mid-game. That can leave you with little option for providing control over that large Termagant brood you needed to buy with the Tervigon. It's also not too likely you'd have many more troops than those still around for holding objectives. So what does your opponent do now? Easy - focus down one Terivgon and suddenly the majority of your troops are now dying or running away.

This could have been avoided by just keeping Backlash at 6" as it was before, OR only making it affect spawned units. Alongside the spawning changes this would have made it a counter to the recently-spawned units, and killing free units is fair enough. Instead the 12" range makes the Tervigon a threat to the large Termagant brood you paid points for. You end up with a critical unit whose loss not only makes it very likely for other core troops to run away, but actively kills them for no reason. It's like having a domino your opponent just has to flick to knock over half your other dominoes. Do any other armies have special rules that force several key units to die and run away when 1 is lost?

When many key units are only Ld6, the absence of synapse is enough of a punishment to Tyranids without adding further penalties. That applies to Tervigons and IB equally.

Phazael wrote:My biggest gripes:


5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

Hive Mind Easter Gift! For only 4pts per model you can now have scytal for your genes.
(It's in the options at the end of the book. Just not sure if the BroodLord can also get some...)

xttz wrote:

Addaran wrote:
Tervigons. People act like it's total crap now, but it's still extremely good. Just not auto-include, but getting one as troop is awesome. Backfield synapse (you need it anyway for biovores, and units on objectives), will create at least one troop units, extremely tough MC troop to sit on one objective, one power, can take template.

The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Without taking into account the IB problems, since that applies to all synapse creatures. The Tervigon isn't a liability, you just have to watch out for 1 single type of units. 12'' is still pretty small and you can have hormagaunts, scoring gargoyles or your longrange artillery (carni, biovore, tyrano, exo) near her. As soon as the baby termies pop, make them run away. Even if it didn't make babies, a scoring MC is awesome and won't die to just one huge blast. ( it would be overpriced even more if it couldn't make babies though...)

To the OP:

Play the army's because you like the look of it rather than going for "what works" I'm a CSM player who started with the 4th ed. Codex so I know what its like to have bland codex's in terms of rules, but I have stuck with my CSM because I love the models and the background

What people were whinging about when the current codex was released, was that the main two items that that were removed was Doom and Biomancy, as I observed it was because they vanished there was a Bug player pandemic flailing their arms about screaming the Dakka mansion down.

Just what I had observed.

What I would say is surprise them all, use what you like and get to grips with them by learning with experience rather than just reading the Dakka crowd telling you that everything sucks honestly I surprised myself when I took unorthodox units to two games against different Tau opponents (I took two units of KB, one included Kharn.. which Dakka spouts as crap units and you know what? during those two games they killed Riptides and I won both games ).

In short: Don't take Dakka too seriously, yes ask them what they think but remember that people can have good and bad experience's and that can be exaggerated very strongly on the net of the web, so take everything with a sack of salt on here and learn by experience how your units work, after all if you listen to everything Dakka spouts out you will be playing Deathstar + Inquisition

Boom - You managed to completely miss what i was getting at there bud.

Things that are not healthy for the game?
Im guessing your new here, because each new codex adds on to that list with new and stronger weapons / wargear.

Nids lacked alot of that to begin with, so taking more away from them really didnt help them out atall.
If anything, they were in need of a few buffs here and there to certain units and points drops in other areas.

No one wants them to become an OP army, but people want playable builds.
No one is interested in mono build armies that have little or no choices other than auto-includes.
This is now what nids have essentially become.

The dataslates have helped a fair bit in bringing them up in power, but they still lack alot of variety without those.

Also, your ideas of "unhealthy units/rules" is a bit of a joke really.
Compare those to other armies and some of the rules backing those.
Nids are very tame and have been for a while now.

I have to agree what SHUPPET and Zephoid said, among others. You can make a strong build with the nid dex and skyblight formation is strong, but overall the nid dex is a poorly written, bland and unbalanced dex with many useless units. A quick read immediately highlighted many of the problems not addressed from the previous lousy nid dex. It is a huge pile of missed opportunities and appears rushed with little effort to make a good product. And adding dataslates to provide some options for builds thta should have been better in the dex anyways is pathetic - yes a money grab - I expect soon GW will release dexes in parts - the HQ dex, the Elite dex, the Heavy support dex, etc, just to scam more money out of customers.

If I didn't already have nids (since 4th) I would not buy them and I would run screaming from 40K. I don't find nids fun anymore and just frustrating - yes you can have fun in particular games (and many people though frustrated will still have some fun) but overall IMO it is a disgrace.

 Phazael wrote:
My biggest gripes:

1) Warriors and Primes are functionally worse for more points. This especially applies to the close combat versions and is largely a function of the next problem.

2) Spore Pods were removed. So the premier close combat army of the shooting era lost its one method of getting units closer to the enemy that does not involve slogging a bunch of bolter bait across the table.

3) Synapse Nerf is needlessly time consuming. I get that they wanted to make synapse more of a concern, but there were ways to do it without making it a random table exercise.

4) Lack of any ground based skyfire is ludicrous. Nids are literally the only newer book without any direct access to ground based skyfire (unless you count Sisters), which forces you to either bowl for 6s on Hive Guard or take the extremely limited Crone.

5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

6) Bonesword Nerf. Sort of ties into number one, but did these really need to go to AP3? Were 50pt warriors tearing through terms really an issue?

7) Venomthrope band aid. These should have been squad add ons (ala Wolf Guard or IG Commisars) that you buy five in one elite slot. Instead, they are a useless unit that can get torrented off of the table before they have any impact on the game that should cost half of what they do.

Things I like:
1) Carnifexes are somewhat playable again.

2) Hormagants are viable once more.

3) Most Gaunt options seem fairly priced.

This is largely a perfect list on what I found with the Tyranid book. A couple good things, but lots of unnecessary nerfs/changes.

I think they look awesome! And for me, that's the most important thing!!

 Price wrote:
I think they look awesome! And for me, that's the most important thing!!

Cool, how the army looks has nothing to do with the Tyranids codex though.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
I care not about the nid codex[...] I care about [a bunch of other gak]

Time for you to leave my friend, you've clearly misread the thread title

Time to stop using snipping of sentences to alter the meaning of what I say to what fits your purposes, its the fist sign of having nothing of substance to say.

Well, this is actually what you said, I didn't twist your words, I just shortened a paragraph long quote to the meaningful part. Here's the full quote regardless and I'll respond to that instead.

 BoomWolf wrote:

I care not about the nid codex, I care not about how powerful it is, or how unique, fluffy or even fun it is (thought I also disagree with you about these proportions, I'd rate them all higher then you apperantly)-I care about how HEALTHY it is to the game, and currently the nid codex IS healthy to the game, while the old one was not, due to a heavy sum of troubles caused by either specific unit's design, or by absurd interactions that overshadowed the parts of it that WERE fine, just like eldar codex is today, and to a lesser extend tau codex. (tau to a lesser extend because all of it's issues seem to intersect with the ion accelerator, making it the hub of them all)

That is all very nice and noble of you, but completely irrelevant to whether or not OP should buy Nids or Imperial Guard based on whether or not the Tyranid Codex is well written or not.



Pro-tip for you who doesn't actually care about the Tyranid Codex: It's not.

Addaran wrote:

xttz wrote:The Tervigon is a liability, pure and simple. The aim behind the Backlash rule is pretty clearly intended as a counterbalance to spawning (focus down the big creature to stop the little ones). However it's implementation hasn't been thought through at all.

Without taking into account the IB problems, since that applies to all synapse creatures. The Tervigon isn't a liability, you just have to watch out for 1 single type of units. 12'' is still pretty small and you can have hormagaunts, scoring gargoyles or your longrange artillery (carni, biovore, tyrano, exo) near her. As soon as the baby termies pop, make them run away. Even if it didn't make babies, a scoring MC is awesome and won't die to just one huge blast. ( it would be overpriced even more if it couldn't make babies though...)

Synaptic Backlash compounds the IB problem - it's bad enough having one special rule that breaks your own units without piling another on top. So yeah, I think we will take that into account.

Tervigons directly encourage use of Termagants by:
a) Spawning them nearby (and requiring 2 turns to get out of range, assuming you can pass them off to another synapse creature)
b) Requiring you to buy a large brood in order to score with the Tervigon
It can then kill both of those units. In what reality is that not a liability? Tervigons are a big red button in the middle of your army that say to your opponent "push here to win".

When your primary defense against something is hoping that your opponent doesn't know how your codex works, that's a terrible game mechanic.

He is more expensive than a Trygon for a MC that hits half as hard. And the Trygon is a bad purchase.

If its the Termagants I wanted I would take a 30 man unit or Termies with 10 Devourers

If its the Synapse I wanted I would take 2x 3man Warrior + BrbStglr units, which is more survivable to Tervigon to everything except S8 Lrg Blasts, throws out two 36" pinning Large Blasts a turn, and hits much harder in general than a Tervigon, and covers double as much area for Synapse without threatening my actual troops



If you tell me you want some combination of the above, I would tell you take some combination of the above. Tervigon is so bad its not even funny anymore lol, he has no Synergy between his roles, and you are always paying extra points for something you cannot use or will cost you even more points.... anyone still taking it is silly... I would take Genestealers before I took Tervigon

 Phazael wrote:
5) Genestealers got worse without any fixes. They were overpriced before and now they cannot even take scything talons anymore.

Maybe actually read the Genestealer upgrade list?

Yeah, Genestealers can take ScyTals for the low low price of 4pts! /sarcasm

The fact someone in the GW design team thought that ScyTals on Genestealers were worth 4pts makes me worry about their mental health. It basically amounts to "additional CCW".

But that AP 6!

The extra attack for 'stealers is actually better than the old re-roll 1's for them... the question is why do you have to pay 4pts on top of the already overcosted models?

2pts would have been fair.

Tyranids new dex is bland through loss of units and diversity of play styles as mentioned above.

If I'm honest I've been up and down on the dex regarding whether I think it's competitive or not.
The way allies make broken ap2 ignoring cover combo's in multiple armies hits hard on the Nid dex or just ignoring cover in general.

Concerning taking Nids to a tournament and doing well, that will really depend on your matchups.
Even with bad matchups and the right list its still possible to outplay your opponent. We cannot forget that the game is largely dependant on captured and contested objectives.
If you can achieve this then you have a good chance of doing well.
The Flyrant is still king, he hugely multirole, he can buff, he can deal with flyers but most importantly he can easily contest.

I bought the codex day 1, dispite the fact that 1/2 of the book had been leaked already. I was hoping there was a page or two that made the army -not- gak in my local meta (Tons of gunline marines who love vindicators/missile devastators, as well as 4 really good eldar players).

I played two games against one of the SW players who tends to not field obviouspowerunits.

Game 1 I did ok, he still won by bottom of turn 3, because he realized how crippling the lost of synapse is now.

Game 2 I didnt get a turn 1. He killed all of my synapse with his vidicators (by by warriors), his long fangs (bye bye tyrant), and his rune priest (bye bye tervigon). After instinctive behavior I had 2 hormagaunts and a carnifex. This was a 2000 point game.

Game 3 I made i to turn 2. Pretty much a repeat of game one in terms of what happened, except one of his vindi's scattered off target turn one, sparing a squad of warriors.

Now, that being said, between the launch of 6e and the new nids book, I was undefeated in casual and competitive play. My friends wouldn't fight my nids no matter what I tried, because I -always- won.
After those 3 games, which took about an hour and a half, I returned the new codex, and cancelled the order I had made for some more bugs. To my knowledge, the FLGS still has the 10 or so copies of the nids book he was sent for the release.

The major good and bad points of the book have been stated far more times that I can count, and basically this is the only codex that REQUIRES you to buy a dataslate or two so that your book can be on par with everyone elses. My only hope for my nids, which I have quite a few of, is that they will get a "6.5" codex, kind of like what CSM got back in the day with their "3.5" book. Not much hope, but it's there. For now I'm focusing on my CSM berserker army, and I even dusted off my old farsight army to give the new awesome that is Tau a shot.


On to your actual question now. If you want an army with tons of models that just never seem to stop, get AM. If you want an army with a bunch of big, hard-hitting things, get AM. If you want an army that takes aerial superiority to the extreme, get AM. Codex: tyranids is not fun to play, especially if you have a competitive meta. That is unless you are like how I was and just happen to be a glutten for punishment.

StarHunter25 wrote:
Game 2 I didnt get a turn 1. He killed all of my synapse with his vidicators (by by warriors), his long fangs (bye bye tyrant), and his rune priest (bye bye tervigon). After instinctive behavior I had 2 hormagaunts and a carnifex. This was a 2000 point game.

How did a 24" range weapon have range on the Warriors turn one? Did you deploy them on the line?

After those 3 games, which took about an hour and a half, I returned the new codex, and cancelled the order I had made for some more bugs. To my knowledge, the FLGS still has the 10 or so copies of the nids book he was sent for the release.

Sucks for you - I continue to win often (not undefeated, as that's unreasonable - but I believe I have a positive win/loss ratio. Without dataslates.

Codex: tyranids is not fun to play, especially if you have a competitive meta. That is unless you are like how I was and just happen to be a glutten for punishment.

I respectfully disagree. I'm not having more or less fun with my bugs than I did before. And I play in a very competitive meta, and a pretty casual one (two different areas).

I've lost 4 games this year with my Daemons.

2 of those have been to Nids, both post new book.

But then I lost heavily to Orks last night, so I'm beginning to think I'm either failing to include enough crowd control in my lists or I'm playing against high model count armies wrong, so I'm not ready to make too many judgements yet, but at worst, outside of a high pressure competitive environment, I'd say the new book is "adequate."

Daemons have a bad match-up vs. Tyranids and Orks, so don't be too hard on yourself.

StarHunter25 wrote:


The major good and bad points of the book have been stated far more times that I can count, and basically this is the only codex that REQUIRES you to buy a dataslate or two so that your book can be on par with everyone elses. My only hope for my nids, which I have quite a few of, is that they will get a "6.5" codex, kind of like what CSM got back in the day with their "3.5" book. Not much hope, but it's there. For now I'm focusing on my CSM berserker army, and I even dusted off my old farsight army to give the new awesome that is Tau a shot.

The only hope I have at this stage, not only for tyranids but 40K is for a fundamental change to the way GW approaches game design. Sure they might internally realize how poor their rules/game design processes are and decide to make a better game that has tighter rules, is updated with errata when needed and has a serious effort put in balance but this seems unlikely. IMO it seems the only chance 40K has of becoming a good game (not that you cannot have a good game with 40K but we are talking about the system overall) is for enough customers to kick GW in the hibatchi financially. If players grumble about GWs poor rules and lack of adequate fixes for problems and either buy the models/books/dataslates anyways or put down the crappy material and starts/builds up another 40k army still giving money to GW they will never have an incentive to move to good game design. Of course some people will never do this because they may actually love the game or just are so heavily invested they cannot bring themselves to shelve all their 40k stuff.

But if a large amount of disgruntled players stop cursing at a dex release and then pick up their other army or start a new one and instead just stopped buying GW product then maybe GW will feel the pinch enough to take a new approach to 40K. And send GW emails telling them why you will not buy any more product until they actually get their act together and put serious effort into game design, playtesting and errata, and warn other players off this game. GW will only change if they are hurting because they have shown over many years they do not care about the game or customers and we as customers need to stop taking this crap. Yes some of us have walked away but the game does have a lot of potential and with some effort could be a really good game.

The new codex prompted me to drop 40k. That's my opinion of it.

I have seriously been wondering if GW is trying to slowly kill off the Nid fanbase so that they can eventually discontinue them without taking the blame for killing them outright, just so they don't have to deal with such a unique army anymore.

It's either that or they just don't care at all about Nids.

I refuse to believe anyone who knows how tabletop games and dice work could write the new Nid codex after the last one unless they absolutely don't give a feth.

 xttz wrote:
Tervigons directly encourage use of Termagants by:
a) Spawning them nearby (and requiring 2 turns to get out of range, assuming you can pass them off to another synapse creature)
b) Requiring you to buy a large brood in order to score with the Tervigon
It can then kill both of those units. In what reality is that not a liability? Tervigons are a big red button in the middle of your army that say to your opponent "push here to win".

When your primary defense against something is hoping that your opponent doesn't know how your codex works, that's a terrible game mechanic.

So if (a) each spawned unit of Termagants is out of range of Synapse Backash in 2 rounds, and (b) yu place the termagants you bought to unlock the Tervigon as a troop nowhere near the Tervigon itself, then it seems to me you are only ever in danger of losing (on average, rounded up) 5 termagants that you got for free. That doesn't sound bad to me. Maybe I am missing something.

Well it would normally hit 2 units of Termagants, the unit it spawned that turn and the unit it spawned the previous turn and hasn't moved away yet, so about 10 dead termagants. Also there's a 44% chance of of exhausting the termagant supply each turn, so on average it won't even spawn more than 2 units. It shouldn't hit the 30 large unit you took to take the unit, though it is limiting you by not allowing that unit within 12" of the Tervi and it's also limiting that spawned units have to move quickly out of range (not always an option and not always the best option).

Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

Granted, I don't think it's as bad as people are making out, I just would rather spend 315pts on something other than a big 30 large unit of Termagants and the Tervigon.

I think alot of the dislike for the new codex is because GW failed to add anything really different. Look at the past releases, all of them seemed to get something new and unique. SMs got gravguns, Eldar got the incredibly upgraded Wave Serpent as well as the Wraith Knight, Tau got the almighty Riptide, Chaos Marines got the Heldrake, Chaos Daemons got .....well, they got the Warpstorm table and, I guess the Khorne cannon counts.

Nids? They got stuff they already had plenty of to begin with. A shooty MC and a choppy MC? Oh, like all the other MC builds? A new flying MC? Oh, that can keep the flyrants company. Really, the only beneficial change was most of their stuff got cheaper (always a good thing), and some of the more abusive units got removed (good for the game in general). I can totally see why alot of long time nid players are bored with this release, but that shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Well it would normally hit 2 units of Termagants, the unit it spawned that turn and the unit it spawned the previous turn and hasn't moved away yet, so about 10 dead termagants.

I'm not sure I follow this. For example, all based on averages.

R1T1: Tervigon poops out 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range. Then they run.
R1T2: Your tervigon doesn't get blown up.
R2T1: Termagants spawned in R1 get out of 12" range. Tervigon poops out another unit of 9 termagants. They push out to the 5-6" range.
R2T2: Tervigon gets blowed up. Only 1 unit is in 12" range, and gets hit with 9 S3 hits...5 termagants die.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also you're probably lucky if the Tervi survives past turn 2, lol. Having both "synapse" and "backlash" is basically painting a "shoot me first!" target on it.

To counter this, my instinct would be to push stuff up field that must be dealt with, so that if the enemy over-targets the Tervigon, they will suffer greatly by avoiding stuff that's almost in their face. Of course, I've never played one game with Tyranids so all this might be good on paper or in my mind but go kaplunk in an actual game.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
I think alot of the dislike for the new codex is because GW failed to add anything really different. Look at the past releases, all of them seemed to get something new and unique. SMs got gravguns, Eldar got the incredibly upgraded Wave Serpent as well as the Wraith Knight, Tau got the almighty Riptide, Chaos Marines got the Heldrake, Chaos Daemons got .....well, they got the Warpstorm table and, I guess the Khorne cannon counts.

Nids? They got stuff they already had plenty of to begin with. A shooty MC and a choppy MC? Oh, like all the other MC builds? A new flying MC? Oh, that can keep the flyrants company. Really, the only beneficial change was most of their stuff got cheaper (always a good thing), and some of the more abusive units got removed (good for the game in general). I can totally see why alot of long time nid players are bored with this release, but that shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players.

I have to disagree. A new player may not have the baggage a veteran player of an army has or would not have lots of models in their collection that weren't given decent rules/stats/points and are subpar choices (many already suffering that position from last dex) as so can just buy the best units that work for them. But to say that the concerns brought up in this thread, for example, "shouldn't have ANY impact to new Nid players" is ridiculous. A new player is also going to have to use a dex that is poorly written with little real effort on internal balance to make the units work as an army with lots of flavour removed as well as lots of opportunities to make units work a little more like the fluff missed. The concerns about the dex are not based only on whether a strong build such as skyblight be made - it is the army overall and the usefulness and efficiency of all the units. If a new nid player wants to make a CC nid army or wants to use lots of rippers or the pyrovore or trygon or raveners or lictors or OOE, etc, out of the dex he can in a very non-competitive area, but will still find not only problems with these and other units but with general army rules and many things that don't fit the fluff even though it could easily have done so.

Do people just not take Dominion if they roll anything other than Catalyst (or maybe Onslaught) on their Tervi? I mean... it works really well as backfield Synapse. I typically don't lose mine until endgameish.